I drink an inhuman amount of coffee. It had minimal effect because, frankly, I don’t think there was a day when I didn’t have any.

Working out, as predicted by the research, definitely improved my sleep. I didn’t have much time to exercise so I feel pretty confident if my “study” had been longer and my workouts more frequent that number would be higher.

Eating late produced a small negative result. I’m pretty sure I know what that was: eating late means also means more beverages late. Those nights I woke up to pee more often. No big thing but probably not optimal for sleep.

Stressful days had the biggest positive impact of anything; not that I’ll be looking to increase those, thank you. My guess is there was a vicious circle: sleep less, feel more stress the next day because of it and because I’m sleep deprived, sleep harder that night.

A couple other things worth noting:

I set an alarm every night to remind me to GO TO BED. I find this is almost more valuable than an alarm clock in the morning because when I go to bed early, getting up early is easier.

I never had any trouble getting to sleep. Part of this was due to being sleep deprived.

No, this wasn’t NIH funded and no, I didn’t have a twin Eric for a control group. But it was tested by a real me on a real me with some reasonable (though not rigorous) parameters, so it falls firmly into the category of good enough for now.

What Did I Learn?

A few things:

First off, I need more sleep. Within reason, more sleep is better sleep.

For both attitude and performance, Mondays would be better if my weekend schedule was more consistent with my workweek schedule.

Reminders are powerful. Knowing the app was watching kept me in line and a GO TO BED alarm made a much bigger difference than you might guess.

Exercise and a bit of stress (let’s stick to the good kind) really improve my sleep.

What’s next?

Keep doing what seems to be working: exercise, GO TO BED alarm, cold bedroom… and more sleep.

I always have a bright screen blaring into my eyes before I konk out. Need to try cutting that out.